Few other products in the history of human merchandising have had such little testing in the marketplace in comparison to numbers of items sold as the operating software package Windows 95. It is as if the lemmings are buying what they are told to buy, by a massive advertising campaign and barrage of media hype, rather than what they need or want to buy.
Sure, Windows 95 will be an improvement on the old operating system. But initially, according to some experts, it will have bugs.
Other experts suggest that Windows 95 will do nothing more than Apple computers have been capable of for years. If this is the case Bill Gates and his Microsoft corporation are to be congratulated on one of the biggest corporate scams in human history _ to get 50 million users to pay for the repackaging of someone else’s ideas to run on machinery that other people have bought from someone else.
The exercise shows that form is more important than substance and marketing is more important than product.
What does this tell us for the future of Australia’s export effort? Sadly, it shows there is little future in the production of wholesome commodities, in items that are unidentified by brand. It shows that when marketing to the masses there is little future in excellence of ideas on their own. Rather it shows that people have to be convinced to buy and it matters not one iota whether what they are buying is wholesome or quality.
Sadly, the lesson of Windows 95 in the history western capitalism is that it does not matter what you sell, but how you sell it.